A Verona Island native, First Selectman Glendon Bevan “started school here” in a two-room schoolhouse. “I attended up to third grade there” before students were transferred to Bucksport, where he went to the Luman Warren and Jewett schools.

After graduating from Bucksport High School, “I went into the service [Army] for a couple of years. I was supposed to be in finance” during a tour in Vietnam, but he discovered that “over there it was a little of everything,” Glendon said.

Leaving the military, Glendon “moved back to Bucksport for a year, got married, and moved over here” after building a house on Verona Island. “I was born here, and I wanted to move back,” he said.

“I worked for Maine Coal Sales for one year,” Glendon said. “Then I moved to Webber Tanks in Bucksport and retired from there after 36 years.”

Glendon has two daughters, Denise and Darci (both are married), three grandchildren, one great-grandchild and “and another on the way. I’m family-oriented. My family lives around me, and I try to enjoy them as much as I can. I live on the water, and I enjoy it.”

He has served on the town’s Board of Selectmen “for 20 years, off and on.” After serving 12 years as a selectman, he stepped away for a while before returning eight years ago. Glendon won re-election in April 2019.

Incorporated as Verona in February 1861, the town became Verona Island in spring 2004. The name change “was requested by a resident and went on the town warrant,” Glendon recalled.

“It is a quiet community,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of problems. For the most part, people are very friendly. We’re a bedroom community for the area, more so now that the [Verso] mill closed.”